Recycling Of Phone Books Will Continue

KISSIMMEE — City and county officials want residents to think yellow and green.

Green for the environment and yellow for the pages of their old telephone books.

The second annual phone-book recycling effort began last week and will continue through the end of January.

United Telephone Co. of Florida and Southern Bell, the two telephone companies serving the area, are distributing new phone books this month.

Quen Wilson, Osceola's director of solid waste, predicted Friday that residents this year will surpass last year's collection of 20,000 books for recycling.

''We've got between 2,500 and 3,000 books collected already since Monday,'' he said.

Recycling helps save energy by reusing resources. It also helps save landfill space - which indirectly helps keep garbage bills from skyrocketing. Telephone books will be taken to a manufacturing plant in Jacksonville and converted to wallboard and other materials used in construction, Wilson said. County residents may drop their old directories at any of six drop-off points: Southport Landfill, 4400 Hunt Road, south of Kissimmee; Bass Road Landfill, 750 South Bass Road, west of Kissimmee airport; St. Cloud Landfill, 2901 17th St., St. Cloud; environmental services building, 2370 Kissimmee Park Road, east of Kissimmee; Buenaventura Lakes Community Center, 501 Florida Parkway, in BVL; and Poinciana Community Center at Doverplum Shopping Center in Poinciana.

The drop-off locations are open during daytime business hours. The landfills are open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and Saturdays.

In addition, Kissimmee city officials have placed a bin in front of fire station No. 1 on Dakin Avenue near City Hall.